Andy Burnham recalls how the Kop’s Hillsborough chants shaped his push for justice

Andy Burnham’s response to a Hillsborough justice chant at Anfield in 2009 is the focus of a retrospective account published by the Guardian on 8 October 2026. Journalist Brian Reade describes how supporters challenged the then culture secretary during a memorial service in Liverpool and how he subsequently pressed for action. Parliamentary records document later steps in the campaign, though they do not establish that the chant caused them.

Reade’s account is an extract from his book The Kop: A Fan’s History of Football’s Most Famous Stand. It revisits events that began at the disaster’s 20th anniversary service on 15 April 2009; the service, panel findings and inquest outcomes it describes are historical events. The newly published account adds Reade’s recollection and the assessments he obtained from Burnham and campaigner Margaret Aspinall.

What happened at Anfield in 2009

Reade reports that 29,000 people at Anfield stood to applaud the bereaved families. Aspinall, then chair of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, had invited Burnham to speak. Her son James was 18 when he died in the disaster. According to Reade, the invitation was unusual: Aspinall said the families had not previously allowed an MP to address the service because they had received little meaningful political support.

Burnham’s speech drew a different response when he relayed a message from Prime Minister Gordon Brown that the victims would never be forgotten. Reade recalls boos and jeers, followed by a chant of ‘Justice for the 96’ that spread across the ground. Aspinall told him she decided against intervening because she wanted supporters to convey the families’ anger to the government and the country.

How the Hillsborough campaign moved forward

Reade reports that Burnham urged Brown to respond to the supporters’ call. By the end of 2009, the Hillsborough Independent Panel had been established to examine previously unseen documents. Aspinall told Reade that supporters had been vital to the campaign over many years and identified the 2009 chant as a turning point. Their accounts describe the chant’s influence; the later official record documents decisions and findings without settling that question of cause.

The panel reported on 12 September 2012. In a statement to the House of Commons recorded in Hansard, Prime Minister David Cameron said it had reviewed more than 450,000 pages of evidence. He apologised to the families for what he called a ‘double injustice’. Cameron said the earlier Taylor inquiry had identified a failure of police control but had lacked access to documents that became available later and had not properly examined the emergency services’ response.

The same parliamentary debate records Burnham thanking the government for supporting the disclosure process he said he had initiated and urging that the pursuit of justice continue. Liverpool MP Steve Rotheram called for the original accidental-death verdicts to be quashed and fresh inquests held. Cameron said the Attorney-General would consider a recommendation to the High Court. Those exchanges show the campaign’s demands and the government’s response at that stage, three years after the Anfield service.

What followed the panel’s findings

Burnham returned to address the 25th anniversary service in 2014, Reade writes. This time a banner thanked him, and Burnham credited supporters’ voices with changing the public and political response. The contrast with the reception he received in 2009 is central to Reade’s account. The documented sequence runs from the memorial protest through disclosure, a parliamentary apology and new inquests; the claim that the protest itself turned the campaign remains the assessment of people involved.